Welcome to 2018! According to cinema, it's the year of Rollerball and, we guess, Terminator Salvation. So we have that to look forward to.

It was a blast to kick off 2018 with Eloise Ross, a guest we've been hoping to book on the show for some time, and as you've hopefully heard by now, it was definitely worth the wait. Eloise braved the heat to talk some film with us for an hour, and for the sake of audio quality we had to turn off the air conditioner and the fan and swelter as we tried to be erudite about all aspects of cinema. It was hot it what we're saying.

We kick off the show looking at some of this month's key films, including Steven Spielberg's literally-ripped-from-the-headlines true story The Post, Guillermo Del Toro's dark romantic fantasy The Shape of Water, Don Hertzfeldt's animated science fiction sequel World of Tomorrow Episode 2: The Burden of Other People's Thoughts, and Ridley Scott's ambitious Getty family biopic All the Money in the World.

We then look at the recent acquisition of Fox's film assets by Disney, and what the merging of these studios means for the future of cinema both on-screen and off.

Then, Eloise takes us through the works and career of her filmmaker of the month, Robert Wise! Wise is a filmmaker you even if you don't: West Side Story, The Sound of Music, The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Andromeda Strain, Star Trek: The Motion Picture. There's far more to him than those titles, which is sort of the point of the show. This episode is a massive eye-opener for Wise newbies and Wise fans alike, enlightening us to one of the great undiscovered filmographies that spans classic and modern Hollywood.

Further reading:

• If you enjoyed our reviews of the new films from Steven Spielberg, Guillermo Del Toro and Don Herztfeldt, you can listen back to our discussions on the films of Steven Spielberg, the films of Guillermo Del Toro, and the films of Don Hertzfeldt
• If you want to watch Don Hertzfeldt's World of Tomorrow Episode Two: The Burden of Other People's Thoughts, you can rent and watch it right this second for a measly five bucks
• Rochelle's in-depth review of All the Money in the World for SBS Movies
• If you're not up on the All the Money in the World scandals, here's the info on Ridley Scott replacing Kevin Spacey with Christopher Plummer, and the subsequent controversy over disparate reshoot payments
• Lee refers to the Steven Spielberg quote about the future of cinema, and you can read more about his thoughts here
• The news that Spielberg is remaking West Side Story broke just before we recorded this episode, and here's Vanity Fair's rundown of the upcoming project
• For more info on the Disney buyout of Fox, here’s Variety‘s rundown of the deal and some analysis by Vox
• Rochelle claims that The Shape of Water's fish man is sexier than The Creature From the Black Lagoon's fish man. Here they are for comparison. What's your choice? Keep it clean.

Outro music: America from West Side Story (1961), performed by Rita Moreno et al, with music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Steven Sondheim

The latest episode of Hell Is For Hyphenates, featuring Eloise Ross talking the films of Robert Wise, can be heard on Stitcher Smart Radio, subscribed to on iTunes, or downloaded/streamed directly from our website.